Friday, October 04, 2013

All I Want for Christmas is a Remote Controlled Sturmgewehr 44

12 comments:

Anonymous
said...

25 odd years ago, my local gun shop had a deal going where if you bought a crate of 8mm kurz ammo, they would throw in a Stg 44 for nothing. I can't remember the price. And that is is Canada. I doubt you can find stuff like that now but back then there were always interesting old mil surplus rifles available. There was an importer in Canada (Century Arms?) who scoured the arsenals of third world dictators and bought all kinds of really cool stuff. I suspect in the current environment you can't do that any more.

Dude, there are old black powder muzzle loaders from British colonial days hanging around Afghan gun markets next to the AKs. If you look hard enough in the Middle East, you'll probably find every weapon known to man in use down there.

Well, the Nazis were influential in the Middle East during WWII. They had some success recruiting soldiers there. A leading sympathizer was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. I think at one point he told the Nazis they weren't killing Jews fast enough. One of his nephews was Yassar Arafat, by the way.

After the war-- before the AK was produced in significant numbers for export-- the Soviets handed out captured Stg-44s to their East Bloc puppets. The East Germans had enough left over to equip "politically reliable" military units. When the AK became the Warsaw Pact standard the old Stg was shipped off to client states in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. And not only old rifles. Captured Panzer IIIs, IVs, and Panthers were also sold off. In the early years of the Middle East wars Israeli tank units with Shermans would routinely encounter Arab tank units with surplus German tanks.

Syria used a good bit of German equipment in the 6 Day War. The first PzIVs and Jadgpanzers came from the French with a number more from the Czechs (I think). It would be unsurprising if they sent some small arms as well. As a side note, the French did a lot with captured German equipment. I believe the P-38 pistol was one of the more common pistols in the French military and police forces after WWII. In addition, the M50 Sherman tanks used by the Israelis either had Panther guns (7.5 cm kwk L70) or remakes thereof.

In addition, as earlier posters have said, the Russians had large stocks of them. In the mid-60's the Syrians began receiving Soviet equipment (T55 and old T34 obr 44 tanks). Once again, it would be safe to assume that captured German weapons would be sent as well in addition to Kalashnikov rifles and RPD machineguns.